LinkedIn on Thursday, June 18, 2026
I used to think so. I used to believe… No, it was more definite than that. …I used to be certain that, if a free press covered everything that happens, a reasonably well-educated electorate that was reading and watching it all would draw its own conclusions and do the smart and right thing.
And then the basically good people of these United States elected Donald J. Trump President. Twice.
This guy is a one man propaganda machine who, as a bona fide narcissist, thrives on the virtually non-stop exposure our media is willing to give him. He’s everywhere, all the time. Wall to wall media coverage is oxygen for the man who would otherwise shrivel up and dissipate into history, leaving us to deal with the scum this slug of an individual has left in his wake.
I’m no fan of President Trump. That said, he’s done us a favor. Two hundred fifty years into the great American experiment, he’s awakened us to the many shortcomings of our system that we need to fix, some more desperately so than others. Among them, the detrimental effects of extreme concentration of wealth and economic and political power.
The problem for our media is that Trump lies so much, so often, that covering him so extensively significantly enhances the effectiveness of his negative, destructive messaging. Either he has no idea what he’s talking about is just making stuff up or purposely lying to create an alternative reality that works to his advantage.
People hear the lies he makes so repeatedly that many among us, way too many of us tend to believe them. As President, his words have an authority money can’t buy. His is the bully pulpit on steroids. At the very least, the electorate doesn’t know what to think. At worst, many listening to him – unused as we are to dishonesty at his level – just assume he’s telling the truth.
Donald Trump tells us what to think. The media covers his drivel and his political opponents waste their air time trying to correct it. In the end, it’s all about Donald and all any of us hear.
The good news is that polls are telling us that he’s beginning to suffer from over-exposure. His incompetence as President, insanity and grift are beginning to catch up to him.
In the meantime, I’ve been wondering… Maybe, from a journalistic point of view, the unrestricted coverage of the President isn’t really a good thing if all our free press is doing is helping to spread the President’s lies. Has our free press become the agent of the President’s propaganda? Maybe, instead of transmitting what he says which is clearly prejudicial, a free press covering a habitual liar should voluntarily limit its coverage to what he does, instead of what he says. To discussions of the substance of his words instead of damn near non-stop repetition of his face saying them.
When you need to put out a fire, the first thing you do is derive that fire of the oxygen it needs to spread. The question is, is putting out that fire something a free media should be doing or is it up to us, the viewers or both?
-Les Cohen
